A Black Gaze
In a prologue to Aleshea Harris’s What to Send Up When It Goes Down, a group of Black performers unapologetically announces that it is “for Black people.” Framed as a kind of ritual, the show offers an array of scenes touching on police brutality, microaggressions, and racial resentment. First written and directed by Harris in 2016, it was mounted last fall by Off-Broadway’s Movement Theatre Company to great acclaim. The author spoke about the play with fellow playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Gloria, Everybody).
BRANDEN JACOBSJENKINS: Your other plays exist in a kind of hermetic space of “story,” where Blackness is centered without self-consciousness and language is an important force—not just in the way that people express themselves but in the way it literally gives shape to the playworld. What to Send Up works with similar methods but looks and feels very different. Was this formal departure conscious on your part?
I just wanted to do something that was activated, something an audience couldn’t just passively experience. I knew this piece would have to do with Black people being killed by police officers with impunity. The idea was to hold people accountable, be
